Civil Society & Governance

The 2013 Harvard China Fund Symposium

Led by Faculty Chair Anthony Saich and Yu Keping of China’s Central Compilation & Translation Bureau, the 2013 Annual Symposium on Civil Society and Governance was held May 16-17 at the Harvard Center Shanghai. Eighteen faculty panelists from Harvard and China and about 30 special guests were in attendance. The participants had the privilege of hearing from United States Ambassador to China Gary Locke and ZUO Xuejin, the Former Executive Vice (Acting) President of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.

Topics of discussion ranged from whether “civil society” exists in China to the growing importance of NGOs as a “bridge” between the government and underserved populations. The conclusion from the dialogues was that civic activity does exist in China and is increasing in scope, intensity and variety of expressions; and the comparative study of Chinese civil organizations will continue to be fruitful both for identifying the limits of Western academic definitions of “civil society” and for pointing out where China’s reforms may have something to learn from “global best practices”.

Thursday, May 16, 2013

1:45 – 2:00 PM

Symposium Welcome

Anthony Saich, Harvard University

William C. Kirby, Harvard University

2:00 – 2:30 PM

Keynote Speaker

The Honorable Gary Locke, United States Ambassador to China

Introduced by William C. Kirby

2:30 – 4:00 PM

Panel One: Is there a Chinese Civil Society?

Anthony Saich, Harvard University

Keping Yu, Central Compilation & Translation Bureau

Wei Hu, Shanghai Jiao Tong University

4:30 – 6:00 PM

Panel Two: NGOs as Service Providers

Richard Zeckhauser, Harvard University

Nara Dillon, Harvard University

Hong Ma, Shenzhen Municipal Bureau of NGO Administration

Peng Bo, Shanghai Jiao Tong University

7:00 – 9:00 PM

Dinner Keynote

“Shallow Urbanization” in China: Challenges and Policy Options

Xuejin Zuo, Former Executive Vice (Acting) President of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences

Friday, May 17, 2013

8:30 – 10:00 AM

Panel Three: Grassroots Service Provision

Robert Weller, Boston University

Youmei Li, Shanghai University

Songyan Chu, Chinese Academy of Governance

Ningli Long, Central Compilation & Translation Bureau

10:30 AM – 12:00 PM

Panel Four: Social Organization and Social Innovation

Stephen Kosack, Harvard University

Archon Fung, Harvard University

Zengzhi Shi, Peking University

Jialiang Xu, Shanghai Jiaotong University

1:30 – 3:00 PM

Panel Five: Future Research Directions

Chairs: Tony Saich and Keping Yu

4:00 – 4:30 PM

Breakout Sessions of Panels

4:30 – 5:30 PM

Breakout Summaries and Conclusion

The Current Situation of Health in China

The 2012 Harvard China Fund Symposium

Led by Faculty Chair Arthur Kleinman, the 2012 symposium was held May 8-9 at the Harvard Center Shanghai and focused on “The Current Situation of Health in China.” Attendees included 24 faculty panelists from Harvard and Greater China, along with 62 local academics and special guests, and 11 members of the Harvard China Advisory Group.

Humanities and Higher Education

The 2011 Harvard China Fund Symposium

Led by Faculty Chairs Mark Elliott and David Wang, the first symposium was held March 17-18, 2011 and focused on“Humanities and Higher Education. Attendees included 22 faculty panelists from Harvard and Greater China, along with 23 local academics and 11 special guests/members of the Harvard China Advisory Group.

Over the last decade, voices expressing concern over a “crisis in the humanities” have been growing steadily louder, both in the United States and in China. While much of the discussion reflects recent trends, social as well as economic (e.g., increased competitiveness, the global financial meltdown of 2008), it is worth pointing out that such worries are nothing new. Indeed, one of the best-known books on the subject in English is J.H. Plumb’s A Crisis in the Humanities, published in 1964, itself a response to a perceived turn toward technology in education after the end of WWII. In thinking about the current “crisis in the humanities,” we might begin by asking a few questions: What are the dimensions of the present crisis? How is it measured? What, if anything, distinguishes the current crisis from crises in the past? Are the humanities perpetually in crisis? (and if so, are we really dealing with a “crisis”?) Is a crisis necessarily a bad thing? We might then go on to consider additional issues: What is at stake in a discussion of the importance of the humanities for society at large? Where does this discussion take place? Who shapes it? What role do scholars have to play in this debate? What are the points of similarity and difference in these debates as they unfold in China and in the United States?

The gradual liberalization of intellectual discourse in the Chinese world represents a sea change from the situation of a generation or two ago, when the theoretical and conceptual frameworks available to scholars in the humanities were often severely constrained by political limitations. Where once it required significant effort to cross the discursive divide that separated Western scholarship in such fields as literature, religion, philosophy, and history, now we find that we are often quoting from the same pool of thinkers – so that even if we are not literally speaking the same language, figuratively we share a great deal of vocabulary. Yet we should not be lulled into thinking that the work of sorting out how best to approach problems of common concern is over. Nor has the old problem of trying to fit theoretical approaches developed in a European context to Chinese realities gone away. These issues remain of central importance, and raise some fundamental questions: Which conceptual or theoretical tools appear to be most influential today, and why? What are the important new developments in humanistic inquiry that will most profoundly affect thinking and research in our various fields? What does the study of the humanities in China have to contribute to this emerging critical discourse? What possibilities do we see for training the next generation of scholars? How do we imagine our fields in twenty years’ time?

Even if there is agreement that the humanities have a vital role to play in society, considerable differences of opinion remain as to how best to make this case to the students who attend our institutions of higher learning and to the public at large. In liberal arts colleges in the United States in particular, the question of maintaining the integration of humanistic studies in what seems to be an ever-greater preoccupation with a pre-professional curriculum is notably urgent. Such concerns were clearly voiced, for example, in the most recent revamping of the general education program at Harvard, as evident in the Report of the Task Force on General Education that was published in 2007. These are questions that Chinese universities face as well. What, then, are the lessons of the American experience, and how might they be of value to colleagues in Greater China? As for humanities in the media, one might well ask how it is that lectures on literary, philosophical, and historical topics find enormous audiences in China via such programming as “Lecture Room” (Baijia jiangtan 百家讲坛)? Is there a model here for the US? How might we in the humanities better exploit social media to convey our message to the public? How can we do so in such as way as to remain “intellectually respectable”? Is this one solution to the “humanities crisis”?